


Stroke of Fortune

by prototyping



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Blood and Injury, Caretaking, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), arguably gen but there are--say it with me--H I N T S, slight canon AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 10:40:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25349362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prototyping/pseuds/prototyping
Summary: She’s this worn down after just four months, but he’s been going for so much longer.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 11
Kudos: 103





	Stroke of Fortune

**Author's Note:**

> this can be read as a standalone piece, but it's actually a deleted scene, if you will, from my _Touch_ fic, which is why this will probably come off as more of a snapshot scene than a beginning-middle-end sort of story. if you’ve read the other fic, you know I ended up taking a different approach to this topic, but I liked how this bit played out so I didn’t want to just trash it entirely. I just changed a few things so it could stand apart from that AU on its own.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

Dimitri doesn’t react. He’s so still for so long, his head hanging and his hair hiding his face, that Byleth wonders if he’s been asleep the whole time.

Then he stirs with a subtle shift of his weight. His low voice is like the crackle of dead leaves.

“The blood on my hands... says otherwise.”

Not just his hands: even in the low light of the moon, Byleth can see the dark stains on his armor.

“It was either you or her,” she says quietly. “You did what you had to.”

Slowly, he raises his head and tilts it back against the pillar behind him. His eye is distant, his expression empty.

“I know that.” His tone is almost rasping, as though he can’t quite manage a growl. “I would do it again in a heartbeat. I cannot die yet.”

Even if he means that—and Byleth has to wonder if he does—that doesn’t make it any less obvious that he regrets his actions. She kneels down on the marble floor beside him. He ignores her.

“I bear some of the blame,” she insists. “I should have voiced my suspicions from the start.”

Something about the girl bothered Byleth from the moment they met. Dimitri, meanwhile, was surprisingly quick to cave, apparently as softhearted towards orphans as ever. Even now, at such a low point, he still has his weaknesses, no matter how he tries to play them off as apathy. Byleth couldn’t bring herself to deny him that gesture of kindness, and so she deferred to his choice. She would just be sure to keep an eye on the girl, in case she was a spy for the Empire, and that included forbidding her from participating in the upcoming battle. The girl pleaded with her, nearly in tears, but Byleth stood firm while everyone else, strangely, barely questioned it. A battlefield was no place for an ally she didn’t wholly trust; she wasn’t sure why she was the only one thinking along those lines.

Byleth never imagined the girl herself would target Dimitri, let alone be so stupid as to attack him directly.

He doesn’t have to explain. She’s sure he acted on the same paranoid reflex that makes him shrink away from everyone these days, including herself.

Byleth made the wrong choice—and Dimitri is sinking deeper into his darkness because of it.

Unsure what else can be said, she only offers quietly, “I’m sorry.” She winces at how hollow it feels.

They sit in silence for a while. She almost wonders whether it’s best to leave him to himself for now, but she’s heard him rant and rave to the dead, seen the way the sleepless shadows in his face are getting longer. If she does nothing he’ll have yet another restless, tormented night, and she doesn’t know how many more he can take.

Byleth stands slowly—she knows sudden movements make him nervous—and offers him a hand. He doesn’t even glance at it.

“You should at least get your armor cleaned off,” she reasons. “I’ll do it.”

Dimitri bares his teeth, but shoves himself to his feet as he spits, “I don’t _need_ —” He grunts, inhaling sharply. His arm twitches but he stops his hand from moving to his side.

Byleth notices.

“You’re hurt,” she realizes.

He doesn’t even answer. When he tries to turn away, she catches his arm. _“Dimitri.”_

He wrenches free, the sheer force of it nearly throwing her to the ground. “Enough! If I want your help, I’ll ask for it.”

“And bleed out long before then,” she snaps back. “Stop hiding your injuries. Do you _want_ to be at a disadvantage? Or do you seriously think you can beat Edelgard like this?”

Dimitri takes a stiff step closer, throwing her in his shadow. “If you _think_ —”

“If _you_ think I’m going to let you run out there on a suicide mission, think again. We leave for Enbarr in two days. If you don’t let someone fix you up before then, you have no place on that battlefield.” She sees the fire flash in his eye, but she counters it with a cold and level stare. She’s done backing down from his self-deprecating rage.

“And what will you do, _Professor?_ ” His glare is a mocking one, daring her to be so arrogant. “Stop me yourself?”

“If I must. I won’t sit here and say nothing while you try to get yourself killed.”

It’s a ludicrous claim—unless she drugs him or resorts to some other drastic measure, she can’t _make_ him do anything—but it’s clear the very implication gets under his skin. His voice lowers further, each word clipped with disdain.

_“You forget your place.”_

All the frustration she’s been holding back spills over, just slightly. “No more than you’ve forgotten yours.”

Byleth’s back meets the pillar before she can blink, the breath knocked out of her in a grunt. Dimitri’s large hands swallow her shoulders as he pins her there—head hanging, arms trembling, his breathing short and labored. Her hands stay clenched at her sides.

After a moment she feels him lean into her slightly, and then a little more, until it’s clear he’s using her as a crutch to keep standing. Even so, his grip is loose; she gets the impression that the shove wasn’t meant to be so forceful. Or maybe that’s what she wants to believe.

If he’s hoping to scare her off with his silence, or waiting for her to lose patience and retreat, he’s playing a losing game.

Byleth waits. She’s done a lot of that lately.

When he finally speaks, it’s barely a whisper.

“Do what you want.”

She does. When she takes his hand, he doesn’t recoil, and when she guides him to one of the Reconciliation rooms off the side of the cathedral, where they’ll have some privacy this late at night, he follows. There she helps him out of his armor and undershirt to bare his torso.

She doesn’t linger on the myriad of scars etched in his skin, but the fresh wound in his back makes her pause. The blade that caused it wasn’t small, and the force behind it wasn’t minimal. He’s coated in blood and she realizes it isn’t just the maiden’s death staining his armor.

By a stroke of fortune, it looks as though the blade went in straight. Had it been angled up or down, it may well have hit something vital. The thought that he could have died so easily—so pointlessly—makes Byleth’s chest tighten and her head go light.

With some effort, she shakes herself out of it. Nonlethal or not, the damage is hardly negligible.

She makes quick work of guiding him—forcing him, almost—to lie on the moth-eaten sofa while she snatches a towel out of one of the cupboards and presses it down on the wound with both hands. She sits beside him, silent as she focuses on keeping the pressure and focusing a healing spell into his skin.

It’s difficult with all the thoughts running through her head. The spell falters more than once, adding to her anxiety and making concentration that much harder in turn. For a wound so small, it won’t stop bleeding.

Right as she debates running to wake Manuela, she finally feels the spell catch—the skin starts knitting together, the severed blood vessels reseal. The steady outpouring of blood slows, and then finally stops.

By the time she lets up, she’s shaking—from fatigue or nerves, she can’t tell.

She looks at him as she catches her breath, but Dimitri keeps his head turned away. He hasn’t spoken a word in the last few minutes.

Byleth feels exhausted, inside and out. More than that, she’s starting to lose hope—hope that she’ll ever understand him, that he’ll ever open up to her, that he’ll even get through this war alive at this rate. Maybe he just didn’t realize how badly he was injured, how much blood he was losing.

But what if he did?

She feels sick. Tired. Bitter.

She could say a lot of things—she could chastise him for his carelessness or demand an explanation for his self-neglect. She could raise her voice or let her disappointment show.

But with his blood coating her hands and his butchered skin laid bare beneath her eyes, her fleeting agitation doesn't feel important, let alone worth unleashing to kick him while he’s down.

She’s this worn down after just four months, but he’s been going for so much longer.

Byleth wipes her hands clean as best she can, and then places one on his head to gently run her fingers through his hair. A ripple of tension cascades down the muscles in his back—but to her relief he relaxes again a moment later and stays where he is.

Neither of them speaks.

They stay like that for so long that she dares to hope he’s fallen asleep. Perhaps he does briefly, but eventually he stirs and starts to push himself up.

“Easy,” Byleth murmurs. She grasps his shoulders, trying to support him. When he goes still she assumes it’s because of her touch, but then a low hiss betrays his pain as his whole body twitches. After trying to rise further he grunts and collapses in place.

As he prepares to push himself up again, she settles her hands on his biceps—not gripping or holding him down, but just stroking the skin there.

“It’s okay,” she tells him in the same soft tone. “You can relax, Dimitri. You can rest.”

He doesn’t move, but his muscles remain tensed. His ragged breath is loud in the silence.

“You can take a little time to heal.” She works light circles into his skin. “No one else has to know. It’s just me.”

He exhales sharply, heavily. He hangs his head.

Slowly, his muscles go soft.

Byleth rubs the back of his neck, and then resumes brushing his hair, careful of tugging on the mats and tangles. She listens to his breathing grow slow and more even.

Eventually, Dimitri does relax. Her hands return to caressing his arms as he lies down again, and every once in a while she stops to ease another small healing spell into his back, hoping to help with the inevitable soreness of the next couple days.

She’s almost certain things will return to normal—their new normal—in the morning. He’ll leave with a callous word at most, shaking her off and pushing her away with more irritated apathy. Edelgard will once again occupy his every waking thought, and together they’ll move to face her in the coming weeks, for better or worse.

But for now, he’s here.

Byleth lifts her head and glances around the small room. She wonders what she would see through Dimitri’s eyes—ghostly bodies crowding every inch of open space? Or just a select few, the victims of Duscur standing silently, obsessively over him as they’ve done for years now?

She rests one hand lightly and protectively atop his head. Her eyes trail across the room one more time as though she might catch a glimpse of his demons if she tries. Of course, it’s only the two of them—and judging by the deep, slow rhythm of Dimitri’s breathing, for now he’s allowed to believe the same.

_You can’t have him. Not tonight._

**Author's Note:**

> and if you haven't read the other fic: I have a deep love for Azure Moon but an equally deep dislike for the way Fleche's plot was set up so I will always attempt to fix it when it's mentioned in my writing at all lmao


End file.
